Val bit her lip as she stared down at her white knight, a cheap piece of horse-shaped plastic half the size of her thumb. She surveyed the tiny chessboard where it sat in the middle of the bed, sandwiched between her and Max.
“So I could move the knight here, or here, right?” she asked Max, pointing at different squares on the board. She’d only played chess a handful of times in her life, but their limited options for entertainment forced her to revisit the game.
“Yes.” He drummed his fingers against his cheek, his head propped on one arm while he sat cross-legged, eyes half open.
“But I could move the queen here, too?”
“You could.”
“Or the bishop here?”
He sighed. “Yes.”
Val could tell he worked hard not to roll his eyes. He’d sworn he wasn’t a chess fan, either, but of course he knew all the rules and could even rattle off popular strategies involving openings and gambits. It seemed his mental faculties had returned in full despite his beat-down, though he still couldn’t remember chunks of the day shortly before and after the attack, nor could he recall the damn name of the accountant who was somehow involved.
She hesitated for a few more seconds, then lifted the knight and moved it to a new square. “There!” She beamed at her cleverness.
For a moment Max chewed on his thumb, something she’d learned he did a lot when he was thinking hard. She almost grabbed his thumb to stop his fidgeting, but instead laced her own fingers together. If she took his hand, she wasn’t sure she would let go. The last thing she needed was another spontaneous roll in the hay she’d probably regret the moment her vision cleared.
It’d been hard not to give in to desire when they spent every waking moment together, as well as slept in the same bed at night. Each day it got harder. But she had to resist. She couldn’t get distracted from her goal—find Robby’s killer and bring that person to justice. Whatever she felt for Max had to wait.
After a few seconds of intense concentration, he relaxed, slid off the bed, and sat down at the pockmarked table covered with their food supply—mostly bags of chips and beef jerky. He grabbed a bottle of water and aspirin and threw some pills in his mouth. The old chair groaned when he leaned back and sipped water as he stared out the window through a break in the curtains.
“What are you doing?” Val asked. “It’s your turn.”
He shrugged. “I’ll win in seven moves.”
“Seriously?” Val shook her head. “This is why I wanted to play Go Fish.”
“I would play Go Fish if you didn’t cheat all the time.”
“It’s called strategic thinking.” She dumped the pieces back into the Cracker-Jack-size box they’d come in and folded the chessboard in half. She’d need to look up a way to cheat at chess next time she got a chance.
Watching him gaze out the window—slouching in oversized jeans and a gray T-shirt, a ray of early afternoon sun playing through his shiny black hair—he reminded her of an indoor cat that mewled each time a car drove by. For six days they’d been holed up in the hotel room, waiting for Stacey to call Val with a meet-up time for Dean. Max got a little bit better each day, until the swelling in his face was gone and only the bruises remained, black rings around his eyes and jawbone and streaks across his chest. He was almost recognizable, which could be a problem for them when they finally got the go from Stacey. No media outlet had mentioned that Max was injured, so no one would be looking for a black-and-blue version of the Carressa heir. Seemed Sten left out of his police report the part where he almost beat Max to death.
Val stretched out on the bed and clicked on the TV. She watched a local news anchor prattle on about the five-day weather forecast through a permanent line of static that cut across the ancient screen.
She glanced at Max. “Your favorite movie about weather…Go.”
“The Core.”
“Isn’t that about astronauts who tunnel through the earth’s crust to restart the core spinning?”
“Yeah, but space weather is critical to the plot.”
“Goddammit, Max, can you not be a total nerd for even five seconds?”
He chuckled, then winced and touched his cheek.
“Tooth hurt again?”
“Yeah. I think it’s cracked.” His cheek bulged where he felt it with his tongue. “I hope they have decent dentists in prison.”
Val sat up. “Don’t you dare start with that again,” she said in a voice sharp enough to kill their light conversation. She didn’t know where his fatalist attitude came from, but he had no motivation to fight for his life as it had been before. When he wasn’t talking about giving himself up to the murderous police, he badgered her to run away with him to Mexico or Fiji. Maybe he didn’t want his old life back, but she did. “If I have to hear you whine one more time about how you should turn yourself in, then I just might let you do it. Your ‘woe-is-me’ rich boy act was old from day one. I’m sorry a life with infinite money was so tragically hard for you, but do you really want to be raped in prison? Because look at you—that’s what would happen.”
Max glared at her, and for a moment she thought her tirade had crossed a line. Then his gorgeous hazel eyes warmed and he gave her a half smile. “You’re a hard woman.”
She couldn’t tell if he was being sincere. Max excelled at masking his feelings—until they exploded to the surface.
She crossed her arms and looked away. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have many rich friends, do you?”
“I don’t have any rich friends. Except you now, I guess.”
Were they friends? They hadn’t done anything romantic together, but he felt like something…more. She was grateful he hadn’t brought up using their abilities to track down Dean themselves. Despite her concern for his injuries and her love for Robby, she wasn’t confident she could say no again.
“Almost all my friends are rich, by necessity. We run in the same circles. When all your friends are wealthy, you don’t have to worry if someone is only with you because of your money.”
“So, say, in an alternate universe, if you had held some glitzy charity gala for war orphans and invited Robby and me, and we’d have met there and hit it off, you’d never ask me to hang with you, even as just a friend?”
“Probably not, if I only knew you casually. It wouldn’t be anything personal.”
“Well, now you know what you would’ve been missing—constant insults and bad chess games.”
“Yep, now I know.”
Their eyes locked for what seemed like an eternity as the television droned in the background. God, she wanted to kiss him so badly. Even with his current injuries and ill-fitting clothes, he was still the handsomest man she’d ever met, as well as the smartest. The fact that she’d never have known him if she hadn’t barged into his weird sex club one night seemed like a narrowly avoided tragedy.
Not for Robby.
Val looked away from Max, her cheeks flushed. The urges to jump into his arms and run away from him both seized her at the same time.
“Do you think your girlfriend’s worried about you?” Val asked, her tone a hair too forced to sound natural.
“Kitty’s still not my girlfriend. She never was. I haven’t had a girlfriend in a long time…a really long time.”
“Does she know what you can do?”
“Yeah. I’ve told her anyway. I’m not sure she believes me. She might just think I’m crazy, like almost everyone else I’ve told.”
Val understood firsthand. She could count the number of people she’d told about her ability on one hand. Even fewer had believed her. “So you look into the future with her—for business?”
“Sometimes with Kitty. But”—he looked down at his feet—“mostly with just myself. No love life necessary. I don’t need deep visions to get useful financial information. I always see the major stock exchanges, represented by certain strings of numbers. Then, based on the numbers clustered around those numbers, I can tell if they’re going to be up or down, and by how much. It’s pretty easy, actually. I don’t even have to concentrate anymore.”
“I wish mine were more useful. I usually see a bunch of junk, and dead people. Robby helped, though.”
She played with a strand of her dull black hair. An ad for a nonpartisan science outreach event taking place at the Pacific Science Center tomorrow played through the silence that fell between them. Smiling children held up lab beakers while cartoon donkeys and elephants frolicked together against the backdrop of the Center’s white arches. A political ad for Mayor Brest followed the spot. With the election less than two weeks away, every commercial break featured at least three of the damn things.
Max drank from his water bottle, making loud gulps as if his throat had gone dry. “When was your wedding date scheduled?” he asked, wiping his mouth.
She frowned and pulled her knees to her chest. “We didn’t have one.”
“How long were you engaged for?”
“About a year.”
“That’s a long engagement with no date.”
“The timing was never right.” For me. “I don’t think I’m the marrying type,” she mumbled.
I didn’t really want to marry him. The thought hit her like a stake to the heart. She loved Robby, she had no doubt about that.
But he wasn’t the one.
So who was the one, then? Some guy she’d known for two weeks who had more skeletons in his closet than a Halloween party store? She willed herself not to look at Max, still slouching in his chair next to the window, picking the label off the water bottle, oblivious to his central role in the struggle she waged with herself. They’d spent too much time alone together. It clouded her judgment, made her feel something that wasn’t there.
Val scowled when Barrister’s face floated onto the TV. She stayed her hand from throwing something at the screen. She still didn’t know how the bastard was connected to Lester. Max continued to claim he had no idea when she quizzed him on it, and he refused to entertain the possibility that Norman might have had an affair with his mother. Just talking about Lydia made him shut down, as if it caused him physical pain to unearth those memories. So she avoided the topic for his sake, though the question still gnawed at her.
Old hometown photos of Norman faded in and out of the television: a plump-cheeked boy in front of his childhood home, a smooth-faced kid in his junior Army ROTC uniform, a lanky teenager in short-shorts posing with his basketball team in the high school gym. Norman Barrister: Hometown Hero. Change you can believe in!
“Seattle Lutheran High School,” Val muttered as a voice in the back of her head screamed something important but indistinct. “Robby went to Seattle Lutheran, too…”
And then she understood the voice.
…just like his father!
Val sprang to her feet. “Dean and Norman went to the same high school!” she yelled into Max’s stunned face. “That’s how they know each other. They were schoolmates!”
“Um, okay. What does that mean in the grand scheme of things?”
“It means Dean has to be involved somehow. There’s no way it’s a coincidence they went to the same school.”
“Actually, there’s a very good chance it could be—”
“We are two people who can honest-to-God see the fucking future. What are the chances that anything in our lives is a coincidence?”
Max raised an eyebrow. “So he killed his own son to keep him quiet?”
“Probably not. It must’ve been an unintended consequence. Or maybe Norman double-crossed him, and now he can’t go to the police because he’s in too deep. Or…or I don’t know. But he’s a goddamn liar. And he probably sicced the police on you because we were getting too close to the truth.”
“You sound paranoid.”
“Hell yes I’m paranoid! Haven’t you been paying attention to all the insane shit that’s happened to us? Your brain can’t be that damaged.” She paced around the hotel room for a minute while Max watched her with cool eyes, though he said nothing. Val grabbed the burner phone off the nightstand. “Come on, Stacey.”
She nearly dropped the phone when it rang in her hand.
“Norman and Dean were high school classmates!” Val said to Stacey when she answered the phone.
“Okay,” Stacey said. “So what?”
“So Dean is definitely hiding something. And what the hell took you so long to call me back?”
“You told me you needed time for your slam piece to heal.”
Val glanced at Max and rolled her eyes. “Well?”
“I finally got in touch with Dean. It wasn’t easy because he’s been skipping work and disappearing for days at a time. I had to call Robby’s sister to get a line on him. Josephine is worried about her dad, says he’s not handling Robby’s death well, that he’s unraveling. Jo gave me Dean’s phone number. When I talked to him, I told him that I wanted to meet to talk about setting up a scholarship for poor law students in Robby’s name. He took the bait. Though he wants to meet at Robby’s gravesite, for some reason. Today at six o’clock.”
“Okay, we can do that. We can make it.” Val started snatching clothes off the ground and throwing them into a pile. She nodded to Max; he stood and started to clean for their imminent departure.
“Val, you gotta be careful,” Stacey said. “Dean didn’t sound well. He might give you up to the police, or do something crazy. And your faces are still all over the news. Someone could easily spot you when you come back to the city.”
“We’ll take precautions.”
Stacey whispered, “And you don’t know the truth about Max. He could have killed his father. He could turn on you.”
Val frowned. “He’s not a murderer.” She looked at Max. His eyes stayed glued to the trash he gathered into the wastebasket.
“Did you come to that conclusion with your noodle or your taco?”
“That’s disgusting. And if you must know, his hot dog truck has not parked itself inside my taco stand. Happy now?”
Max snickered.
“Fine,” Stacey said. “One more thing—Delilah Barrister called for you.”
Delilah? Sweet, Norman’s wife was finally taking the lifeline Val offered…Unless it was a setup, though Delilah obsessed over maintaining appearances, so it seemed unlikely she’d tell the police about their one-on-one chat.
“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” Val asked.
“Because she wouldn’t say what she wanted. She sounded fine anyway, all chipper. I thought she was trying to sell us cookies.”
“Did you get her number?”
“Um, yeah…” Val heard rustling as Stacey moved papers around. “Got something to write with?”
Stacey read off the phone number while Val used a pen to write it down on the palm of her hand.
“Just be careful,” Stacey said. “I don’t want to lose my best friend.”
“Thanks, Stacey. For everything. I’ll be as careful as I can be.” Val hung up, then dialed Norman’s wife. If it was a setup, the cops wouldn’t be able to track her burner phone. She’d have to be careful not to drop any hints as to where she was, though, just in case.
“This is Delilah Barrister,” said a proper voice full of confidence and privilege.
“It’s Val Shepherd. You wanted to talk?”
A shuddering exhale came through the other end of the line. “I didn’t know who else to call,” Delilah said, the confidence gone from her voice. “You were right. I—I think he’s cheating on me. I can’t live like this anymore.”
“If you think he might hurt you, you need to leave immediately. You must have friends, family—”
“No, no, they wouldn’t understand. I’d be breaking my vows. And he won’t let me just walk away. He has friends in the police department. He’d find me. I need…I don’t know. I need you to help me. Please.”
Val held her breath and looked at Max. He met her gaze, matching her apprehension with his own.
“I’m wanted by the police. If I come out of hiding to help you, then I can’t clear Max Carressa of his father’s murder. Don’t tell me you have no idea if your husband was involved.”
A sound between a sigh and a whimper answered Val. She wanted to help Delilah, but she wouldn’t risk getting caught and damning Max to a life of false imprisonment without a major payoff. The silent standoff lasted almost a minute.
“I’m sorry, Delilah—”
“I have e-mails,” she finally said in a frantic whisper. “That’s how I know he’s cheating on me. And he’s been corresponding with someone about money, and they mentioned Carressa. I don’t know what it all means, but I can get them for you, if that’s what it takes.”
“That’ll work.” It was better than nothing, and if it did turn out to be something, it’d be worth the risk. In the best-case scenario, she’d help Delilah, clear Max’s name, and nail Robby’s killer. Three birds with one stone. “Will you be at that Science Center thing tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“Okay then. When you have the opportunity, slip out of there and meet me at—”
“Oh God, he’s coming. I have to go.” The phone went dead.
“Delilah? Delilah!” Val dialed the number three more times—no answer. “Shit!” She dropped the phone on the table, folded her arms, and drummed her fingers on her biceps. Why couldn’t anything ever be easy?
“Well?” Max asked.
“We’ve got a date with Dean at the Lakeview Cemetery at six o’clock, which means we need to clean up and hit the road in twenty minutes. And Delilah says she’ll give us possible evidence of Norman’s connection to your father if we help her leave her husband, but she hung up before we could nail down a place and time other than tomorrow at the Pacific Science Center.” She threw up her arms. “We’ll figure it out later. If you gather stuff up, I’ll carry it to the car. Then we’ll wipe down all the hard surfaces to remove our prints.” She grabbed the keys off the dresser, then stopped at the door. “Did you ever learn how to hotwire a car during your rebelling-against-rich-daddy days?”
“No. They didn’t teach you that at PI school?”
“No. Damn. What are the chances that the friend who loaned you this car has told the police about it?”
“Low.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he wouldn’t talk to the police. He’s my dealer.”
Val raised an eyebrow. “Your car dealer?”
Max’s lips tightened and he looked off to the side.
“You know marijuana is legal now.”
“Sometimes I need something stronger than marijuana.”
“Like what?”
He cringed like he kicked himself for bringing it up. After a long pause, he said, “Heroin.”
“You’re a heroin addict? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I’m not an addict.” Max dropped the wastebasket and crossed his arms over his chest. “I haven’t done it seriously in ten years. But sometimes I just need my brain to stop.”
They stared each other down. What other critical pieces of his past did he keep from her? He didn’t look like an addict; she hadn’t seen any track marks on his arms or signs of withdrawal, so he was probably being truthful. Probably.
After a tense few seconds where every bird chirp and car engine was a thousand decibels, Val sighed. “Holy shit, you’re a hot mess,” she said. “Some women are really into that. Not me, for the record, but some.”
He unfolded his arms, and a hint of a smile touched his lips.
She flipped up the hood of her sweatshirt and opened the front door. “Tell your dealer thanks for his car.”